I recently watched a 20/20 special on Heaven, the afterlife
and the last things. It was reminiscent of the work I’ve been able to do at
Nicholson Funeral Home here in Statesville over the summer. Working with the
Troutman family and their staff as a funeral assistant has been a rewarding and
challenging experience.
Every time
I walk into Nicholson Funeral Home and greet the family of the deceased, as
they are grieving, I am reminded of the book that I read a long time ago, “The
Five People You Meet in Heaven.” In that wonderful book, Mitch Albom writes, “There are five people you
meet in heaven. Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have
known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding
your life on earth. This is the greatest gift God can give you: to understand
what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been
searching for.”
While I am certain God isn’t
interested in matching a book that a human wrote to the reality of Heaven. I
started to ponder the five people I’d like to meet in heaven. The normal array
of heroes from John Kennedy to Mother Teresa would be nice, but among those
stands one person I’d have a few questions for. My uncle, died unexpectedly
years ago. I’d like to ask some questions that demand answers. I think the
beauty of the afterlife, everything we cling to as people of faith, is about
answers to the questions. Maybe the snapshots of Heaven we see on earth answer
that question, or maybe it’s an answer that will take the God of all to answer
for us. Oh what a happy day that will be to have those questions answered.
Friends until that day work in the
fields making Heaven a reality for everyone. Live the good life and allow God
to show God’s love through you. Mitch Albom continues in that book, “That’s
what Heaven is, making sense of all your yesterdays.” I think making sense of
our yesterdays is a wonderful idea, but we have to live today to be able to
have yesterdays. Isn’t it sad to see people looking upward towards Heaven and
forgetting to live on earth? One of the most rewarding experiences is being
able to work at Nicholson Funeral Home and say to people who are full of
despair, “One day, God will make things right.” We might not know what it means
for God to make things right, but I’m willing to trust God enough to wait for
that day.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven
captivates me with this wonderful statement, “The human spirit knows, that all lives
intersect.” So the intersection of our lives with others is not some
happenstance, not some coincidence, but a divine providence that allows us to
meet those people we’d like to see again. God is love, God is all about getting
us to Heaven by the life we live here. With that we say, “Thanks be to God.”
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